Computer Viruses: Everything You Wanted To Know About

Everything you wanted to know about
Computer Viruses

What it all about
About virus.
History of virus.
Types of virus.
How virus spread.
How it work.
Protection from virus.

Free to ask any question at any point
What is a virus?

A virus is a computer program that
enter a computer without permission or
knowledge of the user and alter the way
a computer operates.

A virus is a software that
piggybacks on other programs and
change or delete the data, whenever
those programs are run.
Why virus are called virus
Computer viruses are called viruses because they
share some of the traits of biological viruses.
A computer virus passes from computer to
computer like a biological virus passes from person
to person.
Computer virus can self replicate themselves like
biological virus.
As biological virus, computer virus also effect the
program or machinery in they exist.

History of virus
Len Adelman coins the term virus in 1983.
First virus Elk Cloner created by Rich
Skrenta, in 1982 it attack Apple DOS 3.3
operating system and spread by floppy
disk.
In 1983, Fred Cohen writes a paper
Computer viruses Theory and
Experiments

History of virus (continue)
In 1986, two brothers Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi
created a boot sector virus called cBrain.
Internet worms, in 1988 causes first Internet
crises and shuts down many computers.
Again in 1988, Jerusalem virus that activates on
every 13
th
Friday affects both .exe and .com files
and delete any program that run on that day.
In 2000, Denial of Service attack shuts down
yahoo, Amazon and other web sites.

History of virus (continue)
Love letter worm shuts down e-mail system in
2000.
MY DOOM the largest virus attack till date
which effected one million computer world wide,
was detected first on 26 January 2004.
It affect one in every 10 e-mail message.
Slow down internet performance by 10% and
download time by 50%.

Types of virus
File infector viruses
Boot sector viruses
Multi-partite viruses
Macro viruses
Script viruses
Companion viruses
File Infector Viruses
Attaches itself to other program files.
When these programs are run from
floppy, hard drive, or network they effect
to other file.
Many are memory resident.
When any file that is executed in that
memory also becomes infected.
Examples: Jerusalem and cascade

Boot Sector Viruses
Effect the system boot sector of a disk.
(boot record on floppy/hard disks)
Activate when user starts up from infected
disk.
Always memory resident in nature.
Once in memory, all non-write protected
floppy disks will become infected when
accessed.
Examples: Form, Disk Killer and Stoned

Multi-Partite Viruses
Effect both boot records and program files.
Difficult to repair.
Boot area and files must both be cleaned from
virus otherwise re-infection will occur.
Examples: One_Half, Emperor, Anthrax .
Macro Viruses
Most common type of virus.
They are hard to detect.
Effect program that contain macro
programming language.
Infect data files word, excel, power point
and access files.
As these files are share more frequently
they cause more damage.

Embedded with document.
Therefore when edit from one file do not
reflected in other files.
Script Viruses
Effect various script languages such as DOS, Java
Script, and Visual Basic Script.
Companion Viruses
Execute through operating system rather than
directly infecting programs or boot sectors.
When you execute the command ABC, ABC.COM
executes before ABC.EXE. Thus, a companion virus
could place its code in a .COM file with its first name
matching that of an existing EXE file. When the user
next executed the ABC command, the virus
ABC.COM program would be run.
Other Threats to Computers
Worm
Torjan horse
Trap doors
Bacteria

Worms
Worms replicate themselves.
Instead of spreading from file to file they
spread from computer to computer,
infecting an entire system.
They steal user name and password and try
to log in to other machine.
Torjan horse
They look as a useful
program but cause
damage or do
something malicious
to a system.
Dont makes copies of
themselves.
Trap Doors
It is secret point in a program that by passes
standard authentication.
Attackers leave behind trap doors to reenter
the system easily.
Bacteria
They do not cause any destruction.
They replicate themselves and thus consume
system space.

How viruses spread
By downloading infected files or programs from a
network, there is a chance that you can encounter
a computer virus.

Once you RUN an infected program, the virus can
spread rapidly, especially on networks. That is
why the Internet, the largest network, is a fertile
breeding ground for viruses.

By inserting infected disks into your computer.
How viruses spread (continue)
How viruses spread (continued)
Computers do get viruses from e-mail via
internet.

The virus will come in the form of some kind of
attachment. Opening the attachment can give
your computer a virus.

Use of floppy disk, pen drives ,etc.
Effect of virus
Display a message
Effect of virus (continue)
Erase vital data.
Scramble data on a hard disk
Cause erratic screen behavior
Halt the PC
Many viruses do nothing obvious at all except
spread!
Damage hardware

Effect of virus (continue)
A denial-of-service attack is an attack that causes a
loss of service to users such as loss of network
connectivity.
By consuming the bandwidth of the victim network.
How viruses works?
Different virses uses different methods to
operate.
Like denial-of-service flood the incoming
messages to the target system and thus
consumes all bandwidth so forces it to shut
down.

Working of File virus
There are three basic techniques for infecting an
executable file:
Overwrite - An overwriting virus places itself at
the beginning of the program, directly over the
original program code.
When you try to run this program, nothing
happens except for the virus infecting another
files.
Working of File virus (continue)
Prepend this virus put its code onto the
file and when it is executed, virus code is first
run then file gets executed.

Working of file virus (continue)
Append -An appending virus places a jump
instruction at the beginning of the program
file, which moves the original beginning of the
file to the end of the file, and places itself at
that point, When you try to run this program,
the jump calls the virus, and the virus runs.
Boot sector virus
If CMOS is set up to boot from drive A: or from CD-
ROM then the system boot sector (SBS) of the disk
will be read.
If the SBS contains a boot virus, the boot virus will
become active, go inside memory
It effect the system areas of the hard drive, and other
disks that will access later on.
Protection from virus
Install an anti-virus program.
Regularly update your anti-virus.
Examples -

Norton Antivirus
McAfee virus scan
Protection from virus (continue)
Dont open unknown files.
Dont use or share floppies, CD or pen drive
without scanning with anti-virus.
If you dont know who the message is from,
dont open it.
If you receive a suspicious message, delete it.
Never double-click to open an attachment that
contains an executable that arrives as an e-mail
attachment.

Protection from virus (continue)
Do not install pirated software, especially
computer games.
Regularly scan entire hard disk.

HAVE A NICE TIME

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Everything you wanted to know about

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